Friday, June 05, 2009

keeping track

I was asked at a party by a Sculpturer how I keep motivated to work at my writing projects every day.

Well, the answer, for me, was simple.

I keep a chart, which hangs on my wall beside my writing space, to keep track of each day’s writing activities.

Every date (including weekends and holidays) is represented on my chart right through until November this year. Across from each date are four boxes representing 30 minute slots of time.

As my writing stamina increases, or I get a writing contract for a novel, I will add in more boxes.

So, the plan each day is to fill in each 30 minute box until all four are filled in. It’s a simple graphic representation of my writing time, and it seems to work pretty well at making me do my writing each day.

There are excepts to filling in all four boxes, of course. Holidays, weekends and family illness can negate up to two blocks of writing time. When this happens I just put in a symbol representing what was up for that day.

I can, at a glance, look down my chart and see who was home sick, or when the weekends fell, etc.

Seems to work for me.

But as there are millions of writers out there I bet there are likely millions of ways to keep going on your writing too.

All I can say is try many different methods until you find one which works for you.